The design of plasma reactor for the reduction of emissions from automotives

Abstract

Nowadays, pollution is considered one of the most important concerns due to its increasing percentage in air which lead to severe health and environment effects [1]. The major source contributing to air pollution is automotives. As a Chemical Engineer, the main target is always to have a green environment that why in this thesis, a new technology for automotive emissions will be studied. A design of high voltage generator up to 35 Kv was manufactured where it was coupled to a cylindrical reactor. A test in the University of Balamand was done in order to validate the functioning of this equipment. Argon was used and it was successfully ionized. This high voltage generator created a huge flux of electrons with high energy initiating the formation of active species that will lead to hydrocarbon cracking present in pollutants emitted from vehicles exhaust. This technology can be implemented in vehicles in addition to other purifying equipment such as catalytic converter and exhaust gas recirculating. In addition, we aimed to apply this technology on a real case study but due to lack in time and many technical issues that were encountered during this project, this aim could not be accomplished. This part will be done as a future work where we will be measuring the emission of Carbon Monoxide and Nitrogen Oxide with and without plasma reactor on two different cars.